Space and Science BS Thread

It’s been almost 2 months since this post and item 1 has yet to be checked. Once Starship gets rolling things will start to accelerate but it’s not even quivering yet.
That said , Artemis I is still on the ground too.

 

They have put together a 33 engine booster and stacked a 6 engine Starship on top of it. They’ve already started cryo testing and NASA is calling for a December maiden launch. All this in a vehicle that had it’s first prototype test launch less than 4 years ago.

I don’t know what your point is in peeing in @My Name is Rahl ‘s cheerios but it’s pointless IMHO. The rate of progress is light years beyond BO’s 2 Vulcan engines.

Where’s your hypothetical checklist for any of Starship’s competitors?

 

Chill, I’m just as amazed as you at the progress being made and there isn’t another list because there aren’t any competitors on a track nearly as complex or long. I’m not pissing in anyone’s breakfast, just reiterating that timelines are subject to unknowns and was more in response to Rahl’s post re normalcy. It’s something to look forward to but isn’t a certainty. That might be understood on some level since no one responded to the list. It’s frequently said “there’s a lot to do” and the list was simply an effort to see what that means, both in terms of getting into orbit and getting to the moon.
As for the competition such as it is, nobody else is even remotely going as far out of the playbook in both materials, design, or size and each of those factors has ramifications. By any reasonable accounting of those New Glenn should be years ahead but isn’t. I’ll be very happy when Artemis I goes up. It had chances earlier but wasn’t ready yet(I don’t distinguish between the rocket and launch tower since both need to be ready) and mandatory delays were compounded when the weather turned bad. Shit happens but:
Artemis is rolling back out soon.
Vulcan finally has its 2-BE-4 engines. One assumes a fairly straight forward process through cryo proofing, wdr’s, and static fire tests but that could still take months to ready.
SH is stacked and has performed some full stack cryo testing and might resume static fire testing soon but then again it might not, they’ve been fiddling with it as you’d expect of prototypes.
New Glenn is waiting on the results of Vulcan and 7 more engines from a plant that didn’t exist this time last year. They scrapped the landing ship and haven’t shown any work on an alternative.

 

I think we'll see a full SF campaign of Starship this month. I imagine S24 will be lifted off and rolled back to the Highway for the lifting lugs to be removed and final heat shield tile installation. Concurrently, they will SF B7 in an increasing number of engines as that won't jeopardize S24. We will get 2 separate 33 engine SFs, one without S24 and 1 with S24. Culminating in an OFT in December.

 

Not sure if they’ll SF all 33 without at least a partially fueled or N2 filled ship stacked for weight. I think even Elon mentioned that but I could be mistaken. It’s going to be another interesting month. They’ve brought in a lot of propellant so it’d be nice to see it get used. Hopefully the new deluge system works and they tick off the last remaining items on the FAA’s list, submit their documentation, and wait for it to be reviewed. How long that takes depends on how much scrutiny it requires or if it’s just a check list.

 

I don't think they'll need weight, tbh - Their static fire is a few seconds, not full duration.

 

They've done a bunch of work on the hold down clamps as well. Heck. You could probably even (potentially) use the Chopsticks to hold the booster down.

 

Stunning..
https://twitter.com/launchphoto/status/1587595595094822912?s=12

 

Wrapping up yesterday’s FH launch:
https://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1587574089811603456?s=46&t=JUekY9QeV-bdJBd1xDaiQQ

 

Must read. Quite a few updates on the plan for the early shake down of Starship including the new wrinkle that the uncrewed HLS lift off from the moon.

https://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1587813073292853249?s=46&t=AOrsrEsECRbOEHoh75fyWg

 

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/spacex-is-now-building-a-raptor-engine-a-day-nasa-says/

There's the article for those of those that don't do Twitter.

 

That article gives me the warm fuzzies!

 

Interesting.

I thought non twitter folks could open up a tweet and use the links..

 

I can, but Twitter doesn't like it because I have Ad Block and my Twitter account was suspended for inactivity.

 

Funny, I think I’ve made 7 tweets since I joined last year. I block everyone who follows me and I follow about 300 mainly to stay up on space stuff..

 

This ought to be interesting..
https://twitter.com/rocketlab/status/1587918514614317057?s=46&t=gWwPobXIY3BJACS5Uzmxyg

 

Amazing how stable the feed is now that Starlink has been built out a bit more:
https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1588041140590170114?s=46&t=ktM-9HWGDuqADM6FrIE5Sw

 

I hate to sound pessimistic but I wonder what the lemon rate is. What would they consider acceptable given how prolific the production is? And before you ask, I’m not comparing them to anyone else, just wondering how the quality holds up the the production rate. No small number of engines seem to get swapped later on and a lot of attention is going into isolating each from the others. Maybe that’s because it’s all so new and it’s also still how they isolate Merlin engines so maybe it’s more about Spacex being different. Could a similar philosophy have saved the BO New Shepard?

 

Each Raptor and Merlin is tested in McGregor, and I know their failure rate is pretty high. However, their iteration rate is just as high. I imagine that they pull any Raptor that may show even a hint of a sign that something is wrong, because one wrong engine can RUD a whole booster. Better to be safe than sorry, while maintaining a high production rate.

Blue Origin's philosophy, and one they have stated publicly is to design everything to competition and perfection and then integrate it into the engine.

 

NASA announces that they are pushing back the first crewed test flight of Starliner.

https://spacenews.com/first-starliner-crewed-flight-further-delayed/